


Shiny Soldier

by SpraceJunkie



Series: People of the Resistance [2]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: And violence, Jacks backstory in the au really, but nothing explicit or anything, guns are mentions, idk somebody said they wanted more and so i wrote more thats the power of a comment folks!, part 2 of the resistance au i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 03:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14761454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpraceJunkie/pseuds/SpraceJunkie
Summary: Jack knew better than anyone and better than he let on what it was like to live in a slum.He knew what it was like to fight his way to the top.And he knew what it was like to see the truth and how different it was from what he had thought, and what it was like to run away and fight for a new future, and what it was like to have to harden his heart against the people he’d once called friends.He knew what it was like to have both sides of the story, and what it felt like on the other side.Or Jack's backstory that led to him being a leader of the resistance





	Shiny Soldier

Jack knew better than anyone and better than he let on what it was like to live in a slum.

He knew what it was like to fight his way to the top.

And he knew what it was like to see the truth and how different it was from what he had thought, and what it was like to run away and fight for a new future, and what it was like to have to harden his heart against the people he’d once called friends.

He knew what it was like to have both sides of the story, and what it felt like on the other side.

When he was little, he’d been as indoctrinated as everyone around him.

Here were the poor, lonely, hungry boys, tossed out with the other scraps their parents couldn’t afford to keep, begging for food and only receiving it from the people in the neatly pressed uniforms with the shiny boots and shiny guns and shiny teeth and bright eyes, as everyone who looked like them just kept walking.

When he was six, he learned what it was like to be so hungry it hurt, what it felt like to be so weak he couldn’t stand.

When he was eight, he learned how to steal, how to get in and out of a store without being noticed, how to lightly clutch a woman’s coat to make it look like he was her son without her even knowing he was there, and to snatch food and hide it under his shirt until he was close enough to the door to run.

He learned things no child should ever have to learn.

When he was thirteen, he’d been the first in line on the day he could join the ranks of those neatly pressed uniforms with shiny boots and shiny guns and shiny teeth and bright eyes. When he was thirteen, for the first time in his life, he learned what it was like to have three meals a day and what it felt like to get to sleep every night without being scared of losing every little thing he could his own while his eyes were closed.

And Jack was good at being a shiny little soldier.

He was good at following commands, always scared of being hit.

Good at physical things, from his years of fighting for his life on the streets.

Good with guns, once he had contacts to correct his vision.

When he graduated, he showed how good he was at speaking, at getting people to listen and want to be on his side.

When he joined the ranks, he proved how good he was at all of those things as he arrested and fought and even killed, once, for the government he thought was the only thing that had ever cared enough to help.

Jack Kelly was a shiny soldier, a good one, with his shiny boots and shiny gun and shiny teeth and bright eyes, and he liked his shiny life with his shiny friends and the shiny glimpse of an even bigger future ahead of him.

And then he was sent back to the city, back to where he remembered fighting and stealing and growing, all alone, with nobody to help him.

Until then, he’d been out in the countryside, working against the rebels he hated for trying to destroy the best help they were ever gonna get. 

Once he was in the city, he saw _everything_ , and his world fell apart.

There was a little boy, here a little girl, skinny, starving, with dark hair but so dirty he couldn’t tell if it was actually dark or just caked in filth. 

Here a shopkeeper, trying to smuggle the kids food but not willing to risk it when he saw the soldiers, there a mother, desperately tucking a thirteen-year-old boy into a closet, hoping she could postpone the inevitable for a few more moments.

The shiny soldiers came, and the people looked away. 

Jack saw himself, little kids looking up at him while he handed them hard bread and warm water, thanking him, and he knew the reason they didn’t get better was because the shiny soldiers scared people away.

He saw himself in the skinny, dirty, desperate thirteen-year-olds whose names he checked off as he handed them shiny boots and a shiny training gun.

And he realized he didn’t want to be a shiny soldier, not if that meant he was part of the reason these kids weren’t living, just surviving.

Eventually, Jack Kelly was a shiny soldier in the capital, watching the people around him and hating them even more than he was learning to hate himself.

He sat in the meetings with people discussing how to keep things exactly how they were rather than how to fix the problems faced by the people.

He taught more dirty, tired children how to be good little shiny soldiers, how to keep their shiny boots shiny, their shiny guns clean, their shiny teeth clean. He taught them how to use their bright eyes against the people they once were.

The first time Jack broke the shiny soldier rules, he was out on a mission in the countryside again. His group was supposed to be breaking up a group of rebels who were rumored to be planning something.

He was on his own, they’d split up and underestimated how well the rebels could fight. His partner had dropped back, taking inventory of a warehouse full of weapons they’d found.

The boy had caught him off guard.

He’d snuck up behind him, and even though Jack could see his hands shake, he knew from the determined set of his jaw and glint in his eye that this kid would be willing to shoot.

His training took over; he knew what to do, and in a few seconds he had reversed their positions.

The rules said apprehend, arrest, or shoot.

The look on the kid’s face said terror but pride.

Jack dropped his gun and extended a hand, looking around nervously.

“Run, kid. Get out of here. There’s too many of us to fight, just tell everyone to go.”

He’d seen the expression on the kid’s face as he swallowed nervously and ran away, whistling and getting other kids not much older than himself to run with him.

Nobody died that die, but Jack’s last shred of belief in his government disappeared with the kids running into the woods.

Jack Kelly was a shiny soldier, but that day he’d seen himself in the worn out little boy holding a rusty gun like it his last hope. He could see himself if he hadn’t chosen to become a shiny soldier, if he’d instead fought for himself, not the government he’d thought was so great.

He broke the shiny soldier rules every time he had the chance after that.

He turned a blind eye to people breaking law for good reasons in the city, and they learned his face. He made sure he was the one stationed on the corners by the bakeries so they could give their scraps to kids, he made sure he kept his back turned to the alleys he knew were home to secret soup kitchens.

When he was twenty-three, Jack Kelly the shiny soldier left his shiny boots and shiny gun and shiny teeth and bright eyes behind. He shoved all his clothes that weren’t uniform pieces into a bag and stole as much food as he could carry in with them, and the next time he was out in the countryside he separated himself and ran, shedding his shiny bits as he went, carefully making it look like he was ambushed and killed rather than risking a search and rescue and being dragged back to a shiny soldier life.

He found a group of rebels, admitted who he was, begged to be one of them, begged to be able to do something real, not just sit and pretend not to notice while other people took action.

They took him in, watched him carefully, taught him the best ways to be one of them.

They weren’t shiny soldiers, they were dirty, thin, determined soldiers. They were the soldiers who knew how to get in and out without a sound, how to break up a fight as well as they knew how to win one. They were the desperate soldiers motivated by the same thin faces Jack knew so well, and he fit in with them.

His eyes may not have have been so bright, but he could look himself in the mirror again without hating what he saw. Maybe his guns weren’t shiny, but they weren’t hurting or threatening innocent people as desperate as he was. His boots were worn, but soft and comfortable and easy to move in and hide a knife in. 

Jack Kelly was no longer a shiny soldier, but he was fighting for something so much better.

And he rose, and he grew, and he didn’t hate it.

He ran meetings planning how to make things better, he used his knowledge of how the shiny soldiers operated to make sure all their plans went as well as they could.

And Jack Kelly became a dirty, tired, thin face, but this time, he had a determined look on his face and he knew exactly what he was fighting for and why.

And he rose, and he grew, and he learned to love what he was fighting for.

It wasn’t just a better future, it was those skinny, tired kids begging for food from anyone but the shiny soldiers. It was the people who risked everything to hide them, and the people who risked everything to help others.

Jack Kelly was no longer a shiny soldier, he was a diry, thin, tired, determined, right soldier, dressed in black and carrying a taser instead of a tiny gun, and he was ready to fight for everyone he saw himself in, because he didn’t want a world full of shiny soldiers anymore.

He wanted a world people were safe, and if that meant being dirty, tired, and hungry, well, he'd take that over shiny boots and shiny guns and shiny teeth and bright eyes any day.

**Author's Note:**

> Guys in case you haven't watched Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension, [ here's the resistance](https://goo.gl/images/PhyC69), they're literally the reason for this AU hjkdfhj I just like their aesthtic.
> 
> I'm Asper, I'm a gay fool, and I'm always a slut for comments and kudos, and this fic is proof that leaving a comment and asking nicely for something (or just saying you'd read more if I wrote it ajsjkhks) really does work!
> 
> I figured out how to insert links with html so here's an actual [ link to my Tumblr](enby-crutchie.tumblr.com) to come hang out with me at!


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